Hunting Eve by Iris Johansen

of the cliff, she might be able to see where that slope was leading. She started slipping and sliding off the trail.
    Kill you. Burn you.
    She felt the tension start to overcome her. Push it back. She was defeating herself.
    She balanced on the edge of the cliff and stared down at the road as it disappeared down the slope. Still not the right angle. She moved a few steps forward.
    Yes.
    The road appeared to lead straight down the hill into the valley.
    And it ended in a cluster of roofs!
    A town?
    Oh, God, please let it be a town.
    Too dark, too far away, to be sure. She was looking from this strange angle and could only see these few roofs.
    She tried to move farther along the edge.
    No way. She’d topple over if she went another few inches.
    She’d just have to gamble and take the road and try to reach that cluster of roofs.
    Not now. She had to see where she was going. Doane could not only track her but could use the truck to go after her once she started on the road. Go back and get her belongings. Rest. Then, when the hunt started again, she’d try to lead him in a different direction and double back.
    Hope was zinging through her as she turned and started climbing the slope back to the path.
    Kill you. Burn you.
    She inhaled sharply, but she kept her gaze away from the abyss.
    I don’t hear you, Kevin.
    You hear me. Come to me. Bring me back.
    Don’t think about him, she told herself as she reached the path and started to run. Think of something else. Anything.
    Silver mornings …
    Where had that come from?
    Oh, she knew where those words had been spoken.
    Jane.
    But it had been a long time ago, and she hadn’t thought about them for years. Jane had been in college and come back from Scotland, where she had been hunting the answers to a mystery about Cira, an actress who had supposedly been killed in the eruption of the volcano at Herculaneum thousands of years ago. Dreams about Cira had been haunting Jane since she was a girl of seventeen. She had found her answers in Scotland in the form of a letter written by Cira.
    In that letter, Cira had wished her sister, Pia, velvet nights and silver mornings, and those words had fascinated, puzzled, and touched Jane.
    And she had shared that fascination with Eve one night when they had sat together on the porch at the lake cottage.
    “You understand everything I’ve ever gone through,” Jane said as she looked up at Eve from where she was sitting on the porch step. “That’s why I can talk to you when I can’t talk to anyone else.”
    Eve was silent a moment. “Not even Mark Trevor?”
    Jane shook her head. “It’s too new, just scratching the surface. He makes me pretty dizzy, and that doesn’t help for analyzing a relationship.” She hesitated, thinking about it. “Cira wrote about velvet nights and silver mornings. She was talking about sex, of course, but the silver mornings meant something else to her. I’ve been trying to puzzle it out. A relationship that changed the way she saw everything?” She shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m too hardheaded. It would probably take a long time before I let myself feel like that.”
    “A long, long time.” Eve wasn’t sure if she was talking about Jane or her own experiences.
    “Maybe it won’t ever happen to me. But Cira was pretty hardheaded herself, and she was the one who told Pia what to look for.”
    “Silver mornings…” Eve put her cup down on the railing and sat down on the step beside Jane. “Sounds nice, doesn’t it?” She put her arm around Jane. “Fresh and clean and bright in a dark world. May you find them someday, Jane.”
    “I already have them.” She smiled at Eve. “You give one to me every day. When I’m down, you bring me up. When I’m confused, you make everything clear. When I think there’s no love in the world, I remember the years you gave me.”
    Eve chuckled. “Somehow I don’t believe that was what Cira was talking about.”
    “Maybe not. She never had an Eve